


Way down we go

by Elisexyz



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Christmas Isn't Canon, Enemies to Friends, Fix-It, Gen, Hints Of Garcy, Jessica Logan Redemption, Minor WyJess, Wyatt Does Some Soul-Searching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 18:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18530719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: Flynn and Wyatt have the same idea: sneak away, get in the Lifeboat, get to Chinatown, save Rufus.Flynn settles it very democratically.





	Way down we go

**Author's Note:**

> This is a canon divergence to my canon divergence, because that's the point I'm at, apparently. Last month I published ["Between"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17757701), which is about 10k words of movie fix-it, and this is a slightly different spin to the events happening there. I _think_ it can be read as a stand-alone too without being particularly confusing. Maybe check out chapter 2 if you are confused by what happened in Chinatown, I'm not sure how clear I made it in this fic.  
>    
>  The fic is set in an altered version of the movie in which when Future!Wyatt and Future!Lucy showed up there was no very convenient announcement that the pregnancy was fake, and there was no The Journal Is Now A Lyatt Thing plot. Future!Lucy and Future!Wyatt didn't even bother with the journal, they pretty much just dropped the upgraded Lifeboat on them and said "Get your asses back to Chinatown", and Flynn didn't suddenly become a Lyatt fangirl who is in the business of telling Lucy whom she should be sleeping with.  
>  As far as the events go, they still go on mission in 1848, and they discuss going back to change things and save Rufus (but this time not by murdering poor Jessica, simply by going to Chinatown as their future selves suggested).  
>  Title from [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzXuQbcp8Yc).

“Hey,” Flynn calls, coming up from behind him and making Wyatt jump right out of his skin: engrossed as he was in his own thoughts, reassuring himself that this is the right thing to do and he _can_ do it, he can go back and face Jessica and kill Emma, for _Rufus_ , he completely failed to notice 6’4 feet of annoyance approaching him. So much for his good instincts.

“You should be getting your beauty sleep, trust me, you need it,” Wyatt immediately swings, trying not to look as startled as he is. His stomach is turned upside down, and he knows he _has_ to do this, that it’s his responsibility and that Rufus deserves to live, but he doesn’t like leaving his team behind in the past, and he doesn’t like the idea of facing Jessica again – getting rejected again –, and what if he gets stranded in Chinatown, _with_ the Lifeboat, how are they gonna get home?

Flynn raises his eyebrows at him. “That’s some high schooler level of insult,” he comments, unamused. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m gonna take off.”

Yeah, no, that’s a big no. If there’s one thing worse than leaving his team behind it’s leaving them behind with no soldier at all to watch their backs.

“Where exactly would you be going?” he asks, sharply.

“To scout the mill,” Flynn shrugs. “I’ll try to make it quick.”

“I’ll do it,” Wyatt immediately counters, maybe a bit too eagerly, judging by the way Flynn looks at him.  “I wanted to stretch my legs anyway,” he adds then, nonchalantly.

Flynn keeps _staring_ at him, like he doesn’t believe a word coming out of his mouth, and he doesn’t say anything. Wyatt is too tired and stressed for this shit, so it doesn’t take long for him to snap: “What?”

“What’s going on here?” Flynn asks, and at least he didn’t dance around it. “You’re hiding something.”

“What exactly do you care?” he counters, straightening his back a little and flexing his fingers.

Flynn snorts. “I don’t, really, but we wouldn’t want your emotions to mess everything up now, right?” The ‘again’ is unspoken, but Wyatt hears it loud and clear, and it _stings_.

He takes the hit in silence, bowing his head slightly as his eyes fall to the ground, and, at this point, what can it hurt to tell Flynn? He’s the one who pointed out that taking the whole team back to Chinatown would be an unnecessary risk, so he won’t have any objections regarding his logic, and Wyatt knows for a fact that he won’t be too broken up about him risking his life either, so— not to mention that by telling him Wyatt would be trapping himself in a corner, with no choice but _going_ already, and he’d have someone knowing what’s going on back here, which can’t hurt.

“Okay, look,” he finally says, taking a sharp breath as he looks back up. “You were right, we can’t all risk going back on our own timeline. So I’m gonna go and fix this mess.”

Flynn’s expression flickers for a second, but Wyatt doesn’t manage to read it. In the end, he simply nods. “Sound plan,” he comments, neutrally. “But how about I go instead?”

That gives Wyatt pause. “Excuse me?”

Flynn shrugs. “I said, how about you stay here and look out for Lucy and Jiya while I go and shoot Emma in the face?”

Wyatt gapes at him. He briefly notices that he has come up with this all too quickly.

“And why the hell would _you_ want to go?” he can’t help asking, because it’s risky, and it’s not Flynn’s responsibility, and why exactly is he offering to go when Wyatt did it first? He’d understand if there was no one else volunteering, but there is, so what the hell is he thinking?

“I’ve wanted to put a bullet in that woman’s head for a while now,” Flynn points out, with a shrug, and somehow it doesn’t sound right.

“You do realize that it’s no walk in the—” _I’m gonna take off. To scout the mill_. Son of a bitch. “You _lied_ to me!” Wyatt accuses, when it all starts making way too much sense: scouting the mill while everyone’s asleep seemed really random, but not if it was just an excuse, and he really did come up with that counter offer rather quickly. “You were planning on sneaking out behind our backs and take the Lifeboat to go back yourself all along!”

Flynn raises his eyebrows at him, unfazed. “Isn’t that exactly what _you_ were doing?”

“Y—yeah, but—” Wyatt stutters. “It’s _different_ ,” he finally protests. “This is my responsibility! Had I told you all about my suspicions on Jessica, she wouldn’t have taken Jiya, and Rufus would be alive. I need to fix it.”

Flynn stares at him in silence for a few moments, and Wyatt somehow appreciates that he isn’t trying to pretend like it wasn’t all his fault. White lies are good and all, but not when he has guilt threatening to suffocate him at the sight of the mess he created.

“You do realize your wife is going to be there, with Emma,” Flynn points out, crossing his arms and looking pointedly at him. He makes it sound much gentler than Wyatt would have expected from him in a million of years. “You might have to shoot at her, even.”

Wyatt swallows heavily, but he nods, looking at him in the eye like his stomach isn’t tied in knots at the mere thought. “I can handle it,” he assures, drily.

He just needs to get a clean shot on Emma, and then maybe—maybe talk to Jessica. Plead some more.

(Apologize, for everything.)

Flynn clicks his tongue, breaking eye contact as he bows his head for a moment and he takes half a step back for no apparent reason.

“Well,” he begins, his voice neutral. “Good luck, then.”

Wyatt exhales, thorn between the relief at not having to defend his decision any more and the need to throw up because he’s _doing this_ , and he even comes up with a little smile. “Thanks, man.” A pause. “Uh, look,” he adds, glancing in Lucy and Jiya’s direction: they’re still sound asleep, and Wyatt just hopes that next time that he’ll see them again he can bring good news with him. “Take care of them, yeah?”

Flynn’s lips twist into something close to a benevolent smile, and he nods. “You don’t have to worry about that,” he assures.

Wyatt is beginning to have some difficulties doubting it, after everything.

“Okay,” he inhales, nodding to himself as he checks that he’s got his gun. “See you later then.” _Hopefully_.

Flynn acknowledges him with a nod, and as he turns around, Wyatt hears him moving.

“Sorry, Wyatt,” he says, catching his attention, but Wyatt barely has time to wonder what for and begin turning back, then everything goes black.

 

 

“Wyatt!”

He thinks he recognizes the voice, but he isn’t sure he can name it. His brain is way too busy muttering curses and wondering why exactly he thought it was a good idea to stick his head into a mixer or something.

“Wyatt, are you alright?”

Lucy. The voice is Lucy. She’s touching his face and calling out for him and looking very worried.

He mutters something that in his dreams is a reassurance but probably comes off as unintelligible. Still, Lucy’s shoulders relax a little, and she smiles.

“No sign of Flynn,” Jiya announces, her breath short, as she walks closer to them.

“Flynn—” Wyatt suddenly realizes, his brain struggling to catch up. “Shit,” he mutters. He took the Lifeboat. He hit him in the head so that he could go ahead and do what he wanted. Bastard.

“What happened?” Lucy asks, trying to mask her worry but failing to. “Did someone come, did Rittenhouse—?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Wyatt sighs, rubbing his face with one hand. He pushes himself to his feet, gladly accepting Lucy’s support since he still has a throbbing headache and he feels a little dizzy. “He’s the one who knocked me out.”

Jiya raises her eyebrows. “What exactly did you do to piss him off that badly?”

“ _Nothing_ , he just— look. I was planning on taking the Lifeboat and going back to Chinatown while you were all asleep. He had the same idea, but he pretended to agree that I should be the one going, then the bastard just hit me in the head.”

He’s punching him in the face for it, as soon as he comes back. Whole.

“ _Excuse_ me?” Lucy thunders, going straight from worried to royally pissed off.

“Look, I’m sorry, he caught me off-guard—” Wyatt tries to protest, because he’s fully aware that it should be him taking that risk – and no, Flynn still isn’t his favourite person and probably never will be, but that doesn’t mean that he’s happy with him paying for _his_ mistakes –, but she doesn’t want to hear it, apparently.

“You are two idiots!” Lucy lets out, staring at him with wide eyes and gesturing openly with her arms in frustration. “Both of you! What were you _thinking_?!”

Wyatt has the feeling that she doesn’t _really_ want him to explain what he was thinking, so he decides to keep his mouth shut.

(A part of him takes a moment to be a little happy that, even after everything, she’s worried about him too.)

Jiya has been silently staring at him, her arms wrapped around herself as she probably wonders if Rufus is being saved as they speak – Wyatt sincerely hopes so, because something good better come out of this mess.

“We should probably go by the Lifeboat,” she comments, quietly. “He’ll bring it back there, right?”

 _If_ he makes it back.

Wyatt is _so_ going to punch him.

 

They have to wait almost an hour before the Lifeboat shows up, because either Flynn messed up the coordinates or he decided to play it safe to avoid running into himself.

Either way, Wyatt’s throat closes up as he stares at the door and he raises his gun, just in case the confrontation with Emma went South and she’s the one who’s going to come out of their time ship.

Nothing happens.

“Flynn?” Lucy calls out, taking a step forward.

Wyatt holds out his free arm, silently pushing her back as he shakes his head slightly. He gestures to her and Jiya to stand back, and Lucy’s face twists in horrified realization of what it is that he’s thinking: it might not be him in there.

He silently walks up to the Lifeboat, his muscles tense and his finger ready to pull the trigger if necessary, somehow hoping that Flynn is just being an idiot and messing with them – that makes it _two_ punches in the face.

He’s still holding onto that when he pulls the door open and he finds—

Absolutely nothing.

It’s _empty_.

“The hell?” he mutters, putting down the gun.

“Wyatt?” Lucy hesitantly calls out, and he automatically turns around before he even knows what to say.

“He’s not here,” he finally says, as his brain struggles to catch up. “There’s _no one_.”

 

Wyatt has tuned out half of the conversation, if he’s being honest.

He catches the gist of it: Lucy is pissed off and worried to death in equal measure, Jiya is trying to understand how exactly a Lifeboat could come back empty.

“I suppose it’s _technically_ possible to set the coordinates and then jump out, but—”

Wyatt doesn’t really give a shit.

“We can _ask_ him how he did it,” he suddenly blurts out. “What matters is, can you give me the coordinates of the last landing?”

Jiya gives him a pretty displeased look, probably aimed at his tone, but she seems to set it aside pretty quickly. “Yes,” she says. “Of course.”

“ _Great_ ,” Wyatt snarls, checking his gun for ammo just so that his hands have something to do and maybe he can put a stop to the insanity train that he has suddenly hopped on. Damn _Flynn_ — “Then give them to me, I’m picking him up and coming back. Does this thing have enough battery left for a trip back home too?”

“I think so, but—”

“You want to go alone?!” Lucy bursts out, looking at him like he’s being a complete idiot. Wyatt honestly thinks that _he_ isn’t the idiot here. That was his responsibility, his mess to fix, and a guy that doesn’t even like him very much decided to do it instead of him, and he didn’t even have the _decency_ of coming back.

Definitely a bigger idiot than Wyatt is.

“I don’t need an historian for a quick jump, Lucy,” he points out, and it maybe comes out a little too harsh, because there’s a flicker of hurt on her face. That was probably uncalled for. “I’m sorry,” he quickly says. “Look, I just think it’ll be better if—”

“Yeah,” she snorts. “So did Flynn. Look at how well that worked out.” She gives him a look that dares him to find a counterpoint, but Wyatt doesn’t have any that aren’t ‘well, _I_ can pull it off’, which sounds pretty weak in his own ears when he doesn’t even know what happened.

“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” he explains, helplessly.

“And I appreciate it,” Lucy assures, although her tone doesn’t really soften. “But I’m coming along, whether you like it or not. Unless you want to knock me out, that is.”

He couldn’t, and she knows it.

“I’m coming too,” Jiya intervenes. “I know Chinatown, _and_ I agree that solo missions don’t seem to be a great idea.” She pauses, looking like she wants to add something, but she thinks better of it.

Wyatt finds himself outnumbered, and he can’t come up with any decent argument.

“Fine,” he finally has to say, which goes against every fibre of his being, because those are two more people that are being dragged into a mission that was supposed to be on _him_. “But if things start going sideways, you jump back here, no questions asked. We don’t know what exactly happened.”

 

Turns out, not much is happening where they land: they just find Flynn half-dead on the ground, and Emma’s dead body in the vicinity – Wyatt’s reaction is a weird mix of ‘oh, thank god’, and ‘I’m gonna kill him’, and ‘oh, she’s dead, good riddance’.

Flynn gives them a disapproving look, the asshole.

“Wasn’t the whole _point_ not bringing everybody?” is the first thing he says, looking at Wyatt, who honestly considers punching him right then and there, even though he’s bleeding from his leg and he keeps squeezing his eyes in pain.

“ _You_ try talking them out of it,” he mutters instead, crutching down to assess how much damage there is just as Lucy rushes to him too, gently clasping Flynn’s shoulder and managing to somehow insult him in the sweetest tone possible, to the point that it sounds like ‘I love you’.

(Wyatt isn’t unpacking that. Nope. He has bullet holes to worry about here.)

“What exactly happened?” he asks instead, deciding that Flynn can probably walk the feet that separate them from the Lifeboat without bleeding out. Alternatively, Wyatt can drag him.

“Long story,” Flynn replies. Then, his eyes move to Jiya. “Rufus should be fine,” he adds, and Wyatt sees the tension dropping from her shoulders at the same time as a knot in his stomach eases. Then, Flynn turns back to him. “And there’s a good chance your wife will be back at the bunker too. We had a bit of a heart-to-heart.”

Wyatt gapes at him, his brain short-circuiting for a moment.

 _Pull it together, Logan_.

( _Jessica_. Jessica will be waiting at home.)

“Okay,” he gets out, his voice hoarse. “You’ll explain out of here.”

(She’ll be home.)

It turns out that Flynn can’t exactly _walk_ , and Wyatt’s legs protest vehemently while he has all that weight leaning over him, but they make it to the Lifeboat just fine.

Or, well, as fine as an half-dead guy can be: Wyatt has a mild headache building up, he assumes because of the time travel, so who knows what state Flynn’s head is in right now.

He draws a sigh of relief when they make it to 1848.

 

Turns out, Jessica is the one who shot Flynn, while chasing him after he took a shot at Emma – the shot that prevented her from killing Rufus, so that’s good.

Jessica is also the one who eventually killed Emma. She decided to help Flynn out when he explained to her that Wyatt’s chances of going back to the present depended on him getting the Lifeboat back to 1848, and that information makes Wyatt’s stomach jump to his throat, hope tightening around his neck like a rope.

(“I really do love you,” she said. Maybe she really does.)

When asked how exactly you send a Lifeboat back without anyone inside, Flynn confirms that he literally jumped out, like a madman. Apparently, he did it because leaving Jessica alone in her firefight against Emma would have been very rude, and that is another significant blow for Wyatt’s poor worldview: first the guy goes back in his place, then he decides to die for his wife. Makes him kinda feel like an asshole for thinking that he is an asshole.

(Good thing there’s a lot to worry about and not much time for apologies or thank yous.)

 

 

-

 

 

Wyatt has been avoiding Flynn like the plague, in the past few days. To be fair, though, he has been avoiding a _lot_ of people.

He spent the first night after their trip to 1848 talking with Jessica – Jessica is back at home and safe, she came _back_ –, trying to understand where they are at. She chose him, because she loves him more than Rittenhouse. She still loves Rittenhouse, they are her family, but he can work with that. When asked if she can be trusted to fight against Emma – who was in 1848 when the events of Chinatown changed, so she isn’t so dead after all –, she says she isn’t sure, and Wyatt can only love her honesty. She loves him and she wants him to be there for their child and she’s willing to try again with him and he _loves_ her, he loves her so much.

He has been avoiding Rufus. He’s still pissed as hell about what happened with Jiya, and Wyatt doesn’t blame him one bit, but he also has no idea how to beg for his forgiveness. There is no fixing that fuck-up now.

He has been avoiding Lucy. She has been spending a lot of time around Flynn, and the thought makes him grimace and his stomach twist on itself.

His knee-jerk reaction is thinking that of course it does, Flynn is bad news. He is bad for her. Wyatt wants her to be happy, he _does_ , but he just knows that it can’t be with someone like _Flynn_. She deserves better.

Except.

The guy almost died for him, and for Jessica. He has proved that if there’s anyone who is going to protect Lucy with his life, that’s him.

Yet, Wyatt still hates the thought of the two of them together. He isn’t sure what that says about him.

(Bad friend, probably. Kind of a jerk too. Jealous ass, which Jess spat out at him a few times before.)

Avoiding Flynn wasn’t hard: he has been holed up in his room, mostly, under death threats from Agent Christopher and Lucy.

When he finds him in the kitchen, eating cereals in the middle of the night, Wyatt is definitely _not_ ready to try and deal with everything that happened, and he briefly tries to come up with a good excuse to flee.

(Let’s call it a strategic retreat, though.)

But Flynn already saw him, and Wyatt’s brain is short-circuiting, because it’s night and he can’t sleep and he will have to _do_ this sooner or later anyway, he was just hoping that he’d have a speech ready or something.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?” Wyatt ends up blurting out, and it sounds inappropriately accusatory. _Nice start, Logan_.

Flynn raises his eyebrows at him. “I could say the same about you.”

“ _I_ didn’t almost die.”

“Yet your eyebags are bigger than mine,” he replies, a grin tugging at his lips and his tone teasing.

He does have a point: Wyatt didn’t bother checking out a mirror, but he hasn’t been sleeping exactly _great_. Mostly because he keeps waking up thinking that he’ll find the other half of his bed empty, his heart jumps into his throat and before his eyes can even focus he has already imagined that Jess is gone and she took Rufus, or Jiya again, or Lucy, that she decided he wasn’t worth it.

(Two nights ago, she was _actually_ out of the bed. It wasn’t pretty.)

“You should look in a mirror before saying stuff like that,” Wyatt comments anyway, because Flynn does kinda look like shit too. Much better than when they first came back, but still.

There’s a pause, and Wyatt contemplates just saying goodnight and getting the hell out, but they are alone, it’s late so he can blame anything he says on sleep deprivation if need be, and if he’s being honest with himself if he waited until he _voluntarily_ walked into this conversation he’d probably sooner die than thank Flynn.

He considers sitting down, but he feels much better standing – better chances at making a run for it.

“So,” he gets out, before he can talk himself out of it. “I gotta say something.”

Flynn raises his eyebrows questioningly, although he probably knows what he’s getting at.

“I, uh—” He clears his throat. “What you did— with Rufus, and everything?” Wyatt’s eyes dart away, because Flynn is _staring_ and it’s unnerving. “I know it was my mess to fix, and I—I mean, you didn’t have to do that. With Jessica too.” _Come on, spit it out, get it over with_. “So, uh, I’m just— I’m trying to say that I’m happy you got out okay. And thank you. There.”

Wyatt draws in a sharp breath, standing consciously still in a way that probably _screams_ that he’s trying not to show any sign of nervousness, his eyes hesitantly moving back to Flynn to check his reaction and wait for the inevitable shitstorm.

Flynn stares at him for a moment, thoughtfully, and Wyatt is so _sure_ that he’s going to laugh at him or something, but eventually he only shrugs.

“You’re welcome,” he says, casually. “Although I’ll have you know that I only did it because I thought I was the best man for the job.”

Wyatt feels the tension dropping from his shoulders and a grin bubbling at his lips. “I could have pulled it off too,” he protests, although he’s too relieved to be actually defensive.

Flynn snorts. “As if.” He drums his fingers on the table for a moment, frowning thoughtfully, then he pushes the box of cereals towards him. “Want some?” he offers.

Well, it’s not like Wyatt is probably going to get any sleep any time soon anyway.

“Why not,” he shrugs, pulling out a chair.

(He isn’t sure how he got to the point of eating cereals in the middle of the night with Garcia Flynn of all people, but there he is. It’s not so bad.)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including: 
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> If you don’t want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond!


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